Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing violence from forces loyal to the Islamic State in Sinjar town, walk towards the Syrian border on the outskirts of Sinjar mountain near the Syrian border town of Elierbeh of Al-Hasakah Governorate, August 11, 2014. REUTERS/Rodi Said

In his speech at the University of Ottawa on
March 29, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane
Dion noted that Canada’s foreign policy strategy under the Trudeau government will
be guided by the principle of ‘Responsible Conviction.’ Few observers really know
what the term means; beyond being a direct shot at the Harper-era ‘principled
foreign policy’ label, it seems to suggest that, under Justin Trudeau, Canada’s
international behaviour will be dictated by a sense of pragmatic morality,
wherein the government can be strong in its ethical and normative stances, but
also flexible when needed.

While, from a moral perspective, this may
not sound ideal, it is very much consistent with the way the world works;
states can be as morally righteous as they would like, but the chances of other
states adopting or accepting that sense of morality is highly unlikely.
Further, Dion is correct to acknowledge that foreign policy is more about
working with states that do not share Canada’s value system than those that do,
so flexibility is imperative if Canada is to play a constructive role in world
affairs.

What remains to be seen is exactly how the
idea of Responsible Conviction is operationalized and whether it can become a
successful foreign policy doctrine for the Trudeau government.

The idea behind Responsible Conviction was recently
tested when Dion was repeatedly asked whether Canada would follow U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry in declaring ISIS’ acts as ‘genocide.’ To date,
Dion has said that while Canada is committed to preventing genocide, Canada
will not identify ISIS’ acts as genocide, but that Canada does support an
independent investigation to determine whether Kerry’s claim is valid.

There is little doubt that ISIS has
committed genocide, along with war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic
cleansing, all of which are the core elements of the Responsibility to Protect
(R2P) doctrine endorsed by the United Nations in 2005.

Despite this recognition, there is a valid
argument for why Canada, and others, should hesitate to use the language of R2P
— specifically, the word genocide in this case — in its assessment of ISIS’
actions.

It is insufficient to claim that ISIS is
committing genocide, and to simultaneously distance oneself from the subsequent
obligation to abide by the defined legal processes, yet this is precisely what
the U.S. has done. The U.S. mission to combat ISIS was not designed to prevent
or halt genocide, and since Kerry’s declaration, no substantive alterations to
the U.S. strategy have taken place. Kerry’s declaration that ISIS’ attacks against
Yazidis, Christians and Shia Muslims constituted genocide was followed by the U.S.
State Department stating that such identification would not affect U.S.
strategy in its current mission against ISIS.

Kerry’s accusation is, therefore, a
strategic act designed to rally support and consolidate the alliance currently
targeting ISIS in Syria and Iraq. On this political level the use of the term
makes strategic sense. The problem is, however, that this latest instrumental
employment of ‘genocide’ blunts its legal power.

Kerry’s invocation of ‘genocide’ is all too
reminiscent of the previous occasion the U.S. officially employed the term. In
2004 U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that the Sudanese government
and its proxy militia were engaged in genocide in Darfur; yet in the same
sentence he stated, “no new action is dictated by this
determination...let us not be too preoccupied with this designation.” John
Danforth, U.S. Ambassador to the UN in 2004, later admitted that this finding
of genocide was made for “internal consumption within the U.S.” The cynical use
of the term is not unique to the U.S; indicatively, in 2008 Vladimir Putin
accused Georgia of committing genocide against its Russian minority.

If ‘genocide’ is employed by states exclusively
in an instrumental fashion without an acceptance that this designation carries
legal weight that demands the initiation of particular juridical
processes and action, then ‘genocide’
is reduced to a politically-load pejorative term.

For Canada’s part, it appears that
Responsible Conviction means that Canada will not use the language of R2P
unless it intends on following through to halt genocide. Two questions
naturally come from this realization — does Canada believe the U.S. was
premature or wrong in identifying ISIS’ acts as ‘genocide’? And far more
importantly — if an independent investigation by international organizations
agrees with Kerry’s assessment, what, if anything, will Canada and other
coalition states do differently than they already are to put an end to such
horrific crimes?

Time will tell whether Responsible
Conviction in this case is actually an affirmation of R2P principles or simply
another state buck-passing on its obligation to protect the world’s most
vulnerable.

About

OpenCanada is a digital publication sitting at the intersection of public policy, scholarship and journalism. We produce multimedia content to explain, analyze and tell stories about the increasingly complex and rapidly shifting world of foreign policy and international affairs.